As the old adage goes, ‘There’s no I in Team’. But Ben Coad has revealed how coach Ottis Gibson has urged himself and the rest of Yorkshire’s bowling group to take a very different view.
In-form new ball seamer Coad has taken 35 wickets from eight matches in this season’s Vitality County Championship, including seven in last week’s win over Division Two leaders Sussex at Scarborough.
The leader of Yorkshire’s attack is on course to take 50 Championship wickets in a season for only the second time in his career, a mark he last reached in 2017 – his first full campaign in the county’s first team.
Coad is very much in the running to finish 2024 as the leading wicket-taker in Division Two. The 30-year-old sits only two victims behind joint leaders Toby Roland-Jones of Middlesex and Ben Sanderson of Northamptonshire.
Roland-Jones will visit Headingley tomorrow (11am) in a promotion battle which sees third-placed Yorkshire tackle second-placed Middlesex. The gap is only three points between the pair. Yorkshire are also nine points behind Sussex
Ahead of tomorrow’s game, Coad said: “Gibbo has been a great help for me.
Picture by John Heald. Coach Ottis Gibson, seen here after Sunday’s win over Sussex at Scarborough, has played a key roll in the recent progression of Ben Coad.
“He’s a world-class bowling coach.
“I feel like I know my game pretty well, but having him to push me and make me better has been awesome.
“I can’t thank him enough for the help he’s given me.
“One thing he’s wanted from us as a bowling group is that ruthlessness.
“I’m a calm sort of person, but he’s wanted a bit more of a steeliness. He’s really pushed us all as a bowling group in that sense.“We’re leading the bowling bonus points this year, so it shows we’re going in the right direction and that’s an approach which has worked.”
Of that stat, Yorkshire have claimed 30 bowling bonus points – more than any other county in either division, including Division One leaders and two-time champions Surrey.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Ben Coad is on course to take 50 Championship wickets in a season for only the second time in his career.
Incidentally, their batting bonus points haul of 26 is also the joint highest in the country.
Coad believes he’s bowling as well as ever.
He continued: “It’s right up there. I might be a couple of miles an hour slower than I have been in the past, but skill wise I’m very happy.
“Myself and Gibbo have spoken a lot about targets.
“I’ve never really been one for setting targets in a season. I just used to say, ‘I want to affect as many games as possible’. But he’s very much of the opinion that I should be setting goals and should be striving for them.
“We said at the start of the season that I should be getting 50 wickets, so it’s an ambition.”
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Jonny Bairstow is available to Yorkshire once again this week.
Gibson has described Ripon’s Coad as “an absolute magician, especially with the new ball in his hand”.
And on the subject of goal-setting, the former West Indies quick said: “Sometimes when I’m sitting down and doing the appraisals with the lads, I ask the question, ‘What are your goals for the season?’
“Some of the lads say, ‘I want to help the team win games’. But what does that actually mean – what are you going to do to help them win games?
“Myself and Ben had a conversation around that, and he asked me for my opinion.
“When I played, at the start of every season, I’d set myself a target of taking 50 wickets. Therefore, every game I can go back and look at my goals and see whether I’m in line to achieve or even exceed my goals.
“What I’ve done is set the task for our bowlers to take four wickets a game. You might not play every game, but playing 10 games and you get 40 wickets, it’s a good return.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Jonny Tattersall will lead Yorkshire against Middlesex before Shan Masood returns to captain the side for the remainder of the season.
“Some games you might not get any, others you might get eight or nine.
“Coady got to seven at Scarborough, so he’s ahead of that goal.
“When I came here, the guys were aiming to get 35 wickets. If your best bowler is only getting 35 wickets, you’re certainly not winning the Championship.
“Coady, as our best bowler, took it upon himself to say, ‘I’m going to get 50 wickets’. “He wants to be the leading wicket-taker in Division Two, and he’s on course.
“That’s what leadership is.”
Yorkshire have won their last three Championship matches dating back to late June to hoist themselves onto the coat-tails of Sussex and Middlesex, who play each other at Hove in the final week of the season next month.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Dom Bess comes back into Yorkshire’s squad for this week’s clash with Middlesex.
In beating Derbyshire at Chesterfield and Gloucestershire and Sussex at Scarborough, Coad has taken 14 wickets in two of those – seven in each. He didn’t play against Gloucestershire because of injury.
“We’ve been threatening to do this since the start of the year,” said Coad, of Yorkshire’s recent fine form.
“We dominated a lot of games, but we just couldn’t get over the line.
“These last three games, it’s all fallen into place for us and we’ve been rewarded.
“We knew a win at Scarborough (against Sussex) was going to be massive at the start of the week, and it sets up another huge game. If we get a win against Middlesex, we’ll be right up there and on track.”
Before leaving Scarborough, Gibson said that off-spinning all-rounder Dom Bess would return to Yorkshire’s squad, opening up the prospect of playing two spinners in Bess and Dan Moriarty on a used pitch – as happened in a draw against Glamorgan in early May.
Picture by Warren Little/Getty Images. Middlesex captain Toby Roland-Jones is the joint leading wicket-taker in Division Two with 37 wickets.
Gibson added: “It’s been difficult to force results at Headingley. We played Glamorgan on a used pitch there and still couldn’t force a win. But we’re at the business end of the tournament, and with the way we’re playing, we’re confident we can win on any surface.”
Middlesex are captained by Roland-Jones and coached by another ex-England seamer in Richard Johnson.
They have not fielded an overseas player all season in winning four of their 10 matches, including last time out against Northamptonshire at Merchant Taylors’ School last week.
Roland-Jones, aged 36, is their leading wicket-taker with 37, while all-rounder Ryan Higgins is having an excellent season with 904 runs and 24 wickets. No other Middlesex player has scored as many runs in the 2024 Championship.
Their main spin threat will be leggie Luke Hollman.
